A Case Study: New Platforms for Communication
Med Communications has many happy clients, and in our series of case studies, we talk about some of our long-term clients, the challenges we face alongside them, and how we help them be more efficient, increase the quality of their calls and documents, and use the efficiency and the scalability we offer to meet their budgetary needs.
This case study focuses on medium-sized pharmaceutical manufacturers who look to us to offer innovative means for communicating with their patients and health care providers.
See our case study below for more information:
New Technologies Reach Patients and Health Care Providers
Video chat, text response, and mobile applications offer new methods of communicating medical information to patients and health care providers.
Background
Client: Medium-sized pharmaceutical manufacturers
Challenge
Patients and health care providers have long called into call centers to have their questions answered by Medical Information Specialists armed with scientific data on the drugs being prescribed to patients. With all the new technology available in our daily lives, patients and health care providers are looking for new ways to communicate with pharmaceutical manufacturers, such as text messages, video chats, and mobile apps.
Our clients look to us to offer innovative means for communicating with their patients and health care providers, using new channels to answer their queries. Questions are still answered by our experienced and friendly medical information specialists.
Solutions
Text Response
One of our clients allows health care providers to ask questions through the typical medical information response form but to opt to receive answers via text message (rather than the usual email, call, fax, or mail options). The text message provides a link to a secure website that contains the medical information response, which expires in a set number of days. For health care providers that spend a lot of time sending and receiving text messages, this might appeal to them.
Video Chat
We have a couple of clients that provide video chat to health care providers. Each client offered a different technological connection, but one thing that did not change was our experienced and friendly medical information specialists. They continue to answer medical information requests from health care providers on a one-on-one basis, peer to peer. The difference in the video chats is the ability to show the health care providers a visual aid (such as a PowerPoint to assist in communicating ideas) and the ability for the health care providers to actually see the medical information specialist. This can be helpful if a health care provider is a visual learner or if he or she prefers to see who they are talking to.
Mobile Applications
One of our clients has a mobile application popular with patients that allows them to check the authenticity of medications they have brought home. At Med Communications, we provide technical support for patients struggling to use the mobile application on their phone. The service is provided by Medical Information Assistants who also triage the requests. The Medical Information Assistants first attempt to troubleshoot the issue to get the application to work, but if patients do not have a smart phone or have an outdated one that doesn’t support it, the Medical Information Assistants can help the patients authenticate their medications.